This blog consists of PhotoFeature Stories on artists of all genres, human interest stories, guest blog posts, book reviews, and book excerpts.
CHRIS RICE COOPER is a newspaper writer, feature stories writer, poet, fiction writer, photographer, and painter.
She has a Bachelor's in Criminal Justice and is close to completing her Master's in Creative Writing.
She, her husband Wayne, sons Nicholas and Caleb, cats Nation and Alaska reside in the St. Louis area.

From March 30th
to April 2nd of 2016 legendary and best-selling poet Li-Young Lee is
going to give a poetry reading at two events – the AWP 2016 Conference and the BOA Editions 40th Anniversary Celebration at the Los Angeles
Convention Center and JW Marriot Los Angeles, respectively.

Li Young Lee’s chapbook The Word from His Song
will make its debut appearance at both events and will be a limited publication
sold exclusively through the BOA’s AWP Book-fair booths 800 and 802.

The
Word From His Song will not be
available to order online until after the AWP conference is concluded, and only
for a limited time and at a limited press run.

Li Young Lee’s The Word From His Song
features 18-pages of eight full-length poems, all new, beautifully designed in
a letterpress cover.

The Word From His Song is the tenth installment in the BOA Pamphlet Series, which began in 1978.The other nine titles are The
Bridge of Change by John Logan; The Toy Bone by Donald Hall; Sunlight:A
Sequence for My Daughter Poems by David Ignatow with drawings by Rose
Graubart Ignatow; Survivors by Richard Eberhart; Armidale by Louis
Simpson; Remains:A Sequence of Poems
by W.D. Snodgrass; Nest of Sonnets by A. Poulin, Jr.; Gratitude to Old Teachers
by Robert Bly; and Holes the Crickets Have Eaten in Blankets by Robert Bly.

BOA
Editions is also sponsoring its “Ideal
Reading Experience” where one reader per month will be awarded a free,
author-signed copy of The Word from His Song for the
remainder year of 2016.

BOA
Editions Publisher Peter Conners described Li-Young Lee and Lee’s work as vital
to American Poetry.

"Since the publication of his debut collection, Rose (BOA Editions,
1986), Li-Young Lee has
remained a singular, vital figure in American poetry. Because the publication
and promotion of his works has been a focus of BOA’s efforts for the past 30
years, it feels fitting that on the 40th anniversary of the press,
we share a selection of Li-Young Lee’s newest work in a beautiful, collectible
chapbook. A work of art in every sense, this limited edition publication will
be a must-have collectible for poetry readers everywhere.”

Feature writer Christal Rice Cooper
conducted an interview with Li Young Lee via email and telephone from February
29, 2016 to March 28, 2016.Below is the
scripted interview between Lee and Cooper.

The
sparrow on my rooftop shouts,

"All
roads be blessed!”

Excerpt
from “The Word From His Song”

The last time we spoke
was July of 2013.What has changed in
your personal life and poetry life since then?

Wow, the last time we spoke was 2013?It feels so much longer ago than that.What has changed?You ask.Well, I feel a lifetime older, and less in many ways, mostly
physically.But in important ways, I feel significant
increase:more joy, more mirth, more
interest, more mystery, a deeper faith in poetry, in its practice and in its
yogic dimensions, and a deeper connection to both time and to eternity.

Also, all my life, I’ve struggled to keep death
and impermanence in my radar, but lately it’s easier, less of a struggle to
maintain awareness of my own transience, and that experience more and more
instills in me a near giddiness and amazement at being alive, as well as
greater focus, greater clarity and direction.A flower is my organizing principle.Love is my compass.And as for my
writing, it feels more introverted to me.But you’ll have to tell me if that comes through.

I
loved you before I was born.

It
doesn’t make sense, I know.

Excerpt
from “I Loved You Before I Was Born”

Can you choose one poem
from The Word from His Song and tell
us the step-by-step process of writing that specific poem from the moment the
idea is birthed in your brain until final book form?

To
be honest, I’m not able to give an honest and accurate account.I have exactly no idea how any of these poems
got written.I suppose I could
re-imagine the process for one of the poems, but I suspect that would not be
free of fiction.From inception, and
throughout revision, each day, the whole process occurs in a state of
heightened awareness and presence I barely remember when it’s over.

It’s
just a needle I thread,

A
sleeve I keep trying to mend, the spool diminishing

Excerpt
from “At The Year’s Revolving Door”

How did the idea of the
BOA pamphlet come into being?

Peter
Conners and I have wanted to do a BOA project for quite some time.When BOA’s 40th Anniversary came
around, the idea of a chapbook came up.I don’t know who thought of it, but I’m so happy we’re getting it done.

How would you describe
these eight poems?

The
best I could do.

In your previous books
you’ve written mostly at night, with the focus on your father and struggled
with insomnia as indicated in “Folding A Five Cornered Star So The Corners
Meet.”Did you experience the same things
in The Word from His Song?

Well
I seem to be working around the clock these days, and with greater glee.I can’t wait to get to it when I wake up, and
find it hard to part with when I’m exhausted and ready to take a break.I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel
something like a greater and greater surrendering to the impulse of writing, a
more immediate answering to the call of the imagination.

It
must be the stars’ insomnia.

And
I am their earthbound descendant

Excerpt
from “Folding A Five Cornered Star So
the Corners Meet”

What poem is your
favorite and why?

On
any day, I have a different favorite poem, but it’s never one of my own.

In “Hidden Hearing” the
poem is about God.Who is God to you
now?

God
is my true nature and identity, my origin and my destiny.

Last
night I dreamed of voices in a grove.

Ladders
reaching from the ground into the branches.

Excerpt
from “Hidden Hearing”

In “Leaving” you mention
the trees outside your window.When you
look out thatwindow today what do you see, hear,
taste, smell?

Well,
I’m about 500 miles away from that window at the moment, and won’t be returning
to that window for a few more months.

Each
day, less leaves

In
the tree outside my window

Excerpt
from “Leaving”

You are going to AWP in
Los Angeles AND you will give a reading to celebrate BOA 40th
anniversary.What is one (and I know
there are many) thing you will talk about, and how do you prepare yourself for
such two great appearances?

On
the one hand, I don’t prepare at all.I
never plan to say anything or do anything.On the other hand, I’ve been preparing all of my life since I see
everything, everything I do in my life as an opportunity to practice greater
presence and awareness.Whether I daily
succeed or not in that practice is almost beside the point.The point is the practice.Giving a public talk is just one more
opportunity to practice.

I
must know how to bless

And
how to receive blessing.

Excerpt
from “Treasure Uncovered”

Your books are all
different but at the same time with the same theme.I feel this is true of The Word from His Song.Do
you agree?And what makes The Word from His Song different from
your previous works?

I
guess each book would have to be different, since I’m not the same even from
one moment to the next.I mean, even my
body is changing at something like 6 billion cells a minute.You, as an objective reader, may be in a
better position to tell me how these poems are different from my other work. I
can only tell you what I wish and hope for.I hope they are simpler, deeper, truer, more sincere, and less “literary.”But I don’t know if, in fact, they are
so.

Of
all these things,

words
weigh too much, yet not enough.

Excerpt
from “Why Are You Awake?”

1.

Li Young Lee in 2015

2.

Jacket cover of The Word from
His Song

3.

BOA Staff.

Peter Conners is far right standing.

4, 5, and and 15.

BOA Logo

6.

The Bridge of Change
by John Logan

7.

The Toy Bone by
Donald Hall

8.

Sunlight:A
Sequence for My Daughter Poems by David Ignatow with drawings by Rose
Graubart Ignatow;

9.

Survivors by
Richard Eberhart

10.

Armidale by
Louis Simpson

11.

Remains:A Sequence
of Poems by W.D. Snodgrass

12.

Nest of Sonnets by A.
Poulin, Jr.

13.

Gratitude to Old Teachers by Robert Bly

14.

Holes the Crickets Have Eaten in Blankets by Robert Bly.

16.

Peter Conners

Copyright granted by Peter Conners

17.

Jacket cover of Rose

18.

Jacket cover of The City in
Which I Love You

19.

Jacket cover of Book of My
Nights

20.

Jacket cover of Behind My Eyes

21.

Jacket cover of The Winged
Seed:A Remembrance

22.

Jacket cover of Breaking The
Alabaster Jar:Conversations With Li
Young Lee

23.

Artwork by Christal Rice Cooper

24.

Li Young Lee on November 2013.

25.Donna Lee and Li-Young Lee. The couple have been married since November of 1976 and have two sons ages 31 and 32. They reside in Chicago, Illinois.

Friday, March 25, 2016

This
was originally published on February 6, 2014 in the Winston-Salem Journal

Copyright
granted by Terri Kirby Erickson

Guest
Blogger Terri Kirby Erickson:

on
her poem “Leroy and Viola”

and
the history behind it.

From
the moment I read John Railey’s column last year about people martyred during
the struggle for civil rights, I was intrigued as well as outraged by a brief
reference to 19-year-old African-American civil rights worker, Leroy Moton, and
Viola Gregg Liuzzo, a white, middle-aged housewife and mother from Detroit.

There
are uplifting stories from this tumultuous period in our nation's history, but
mostly darker tales — the kind that will haunt us forever. This story, I'm
afraid, is one of them. It begins with the everyday image of two people driving
down a long stretch of highway, listening to the radio. It ends, for one of
them, with sudden and devastating violence.

On the evening of March 25, 1965,
after a march in Montgomery, Ala., Liuzzo — a proud member of the NAACP — was
giving Moton a ride back to Selma.

At
some point in their journey, armed Klansmen spied this lone white woman driving
a car with Michigan plates and her black male passenger. They were so enraged
by this "outsider" and the appearance of "race mixing," they
began to give chase. By some accounts, both cars were soon traveling at speeds
of 100 miles per hour.

When
the gunmen were able to get close enough to Liuzzo's vehicle, they shot her
twice in the head. The car careened into a ditch and Moton, covered in Liuzzo's
blood, pretended to be dead — the only reason this young man survived to tell
the world what happened.

It
is hard to imagine the terror he must have felt when that quartet of killers
gathered around the wreckage, searching for survivors. For Leroy Moton to
"play dead" so convincingly (beside the bloody corpse of a woman who
had been vibrantly alive only seconds before), is a testimony to his survival
skills, not to mention the bravery already evidenced by the choice he made to
march for civil rights in the segregated South.

Eventually,
three of Viola Liuzzo's murderers were brought to trial. In the Encyclopedia of
Alabama (published October 24, 2007), the author writes that the Klansmen were
acquitted the first time around, after rumor and innuendo did their work to
destroy Liuzzo's reputation. Some even hinted that Liuzzo and Moton had a
romantic relationship — damaging not only because Liuzzo was a married woman
and the mother of five children, but because it was still illegal in many parts
of the country, including Alabama, for whites and non-whites to cohabitate or
engage in sexual acts.

As
it turned out, the fourth man involved in the shooting was a "paid FBI
informant" and the charges against him were dropped. There were subsequent
trials, according to the EOA, wherein "Alabama juries" continued to
"clear" the Klansmen. Federal juries finally convicted them of
"violating Liuzzo's civil rights," and "sentenced the men to ten
years in prison." One "died in March, 1966, before beginning his
sentence," and "the FBI informant was granted full immunity and
placed in the federal witness protection program."

There
is speculation that the FBI, under orders from Bureau Director J. Edgar Hoover,
was responsible for the smear campaign against Viola Liuzzo. Some even say it
was the FBI informant who pulled the trigger. But this fact is indisputable:
Viola Liuzzo and far too many others, black and white, made the ultimate
sacrifice in the fight for equal rights.

Liuzzo's
murder did, however, "move President Johnson to order a federal
investigation of the Klan, and to petition Congress to expand the Federal
Conspiracy Act of 1870 to make the murder of civil rights activists a federal
crime. Her death increased congressional support for the passage of the Voting
Rights Act, which Johnson signed on August 6, 1965."

The
EOA goes on to say that "in 1989, Viola Liuzzo became one of forty
civil-rights martyrs whose lives were commemorated on the Civil Rights Memorial
in Montgomery. In 1991, the Women of the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference erected a stone marker on Highway 80 at the spot where she was
murdered."

As
for Leroy Moton, he is still with us. I have had the privilege of corresponding
with him on a few occasions, and was able to tell him how much I respect and
admire him. Both he and the late Viola Liuzzo, as well as scores of other
champions for civil rights, are an inspiration.

It is important to continue sharing their
stories, and to honor these brave men and women who sacrificed so much in
pursuit of justice for all.

Leroy and Viola

Come Saturday morning, poor black men
gathered on street corners, waiting for white
men in Cadillacs to drive by slow, shoutinghey boy from their rolled-down windows, get in, which meant there was a job digging ditches
or other backbreaking work for less money
than it cost to feed the family dog. Nights
were harder, what with hooded gangs of racists
wrapped in bed sheets roaming the countryside,
and woe to anybody who wasn’t white once
those half-drunk, hatemongering mobs with
their burning crosses and lengths of rope,
arrived on the scene. So in 1965 when married
mother-of-five Viola Gregg Liuzzo volunteered
to drive nineteen-year-old Leroy Moton back
to Selma—both fresh from a freedom march
in Montgomery, Alabama—the sight of a white
woman with a black man in the front seat of
a vehicle sporting Michigan plates didn’t sit
well with Klansmen who were, as usual, wild
as pent-up ponies in a barn blaze. So they chased
the pair down and fired two bullets into Liuzzo’s
brain, laughing like loons when the car careened
into a ditch. Covered in blood, Moton played
dead—surviving the shots, the crash, and the killers’
swift perusal of the wreckage. But Viola Liuzzo
is gone except in memory, where the same reel
runs over and over in Leroy Moton’s mind:
a pretty woman’s profile, pale as milk against
the purpling sky, and his hand, dark as rivers
on the radio dial—strangers joined forever
by history, seconds before the slaughter.

Terri Kirby
Ericksonis the author of four
collections of poetry, including In the Palms of Angels (Press 53, 2011),
winner of three international awards, and her latest collection, A Lake of
Light and Clouds (Press 53, 2014). Telling Tales of Dusk (Press
53, 2009) was #23 on the Poetry Foundation Contemporary Best Seller List in
2010. Her work has won numerous awards, and has appeared in the 2013 Poet’s
Market, The Christian Science Monitor, North Carolina Literary
Review, Storysouth, JAMA, Verse Daily, and many other
publications, and has twice been chosen by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser
for inclusion in his American Life in Poetry column, sponsored by The
Poetry Foundation and the Library of Congress. She is a member of Delta Kappa
Gamma Society International, a professional organization of women educators,
and has taught a number of poetry classes in public schools, universities, and
other venues.

Sullivan described Black Ice as “a book of poems about my father’s dementia
and death, as well as the complex relationships between fathers and sons.”

Life for David Sullivan, the youngest of
three sons, changed forever on December 23, 1981, when his father, Denis
Garland Sullivan, was in an automobile accident.

Black Ice 2

My dad’s hands were yanked

from the Datsun’s steering wheel

as the bucket seat

back broke and he sailed

past racing telephone poles

and slurring pine trees

to shatter rear glass

and smash a pick-up’s grille, then

drop back as the car

met the snowbank’s fist.

His brain in its liquid case

slammed against bone,

contused as he stilled.

Back windshield diamonded him

in a blood-mask, streaked

by snowpack the dazed

truck driver used to staunch flow.

radiator’s shrill

broke through deadened ears

We’re thrown by what we don’t know.

Ice slides beneath us.

Denis Sullivan survived the horrific
accident but lost a huge piece of his identity by suffering a brain injury that
left him with frontal lobe dementia, mental illness, the loss of basic tasks
such as communicating, reading, and writing; but, even more tragically, he lost
his livelihood, but fortunately only temporarily.

“My
father taught political science at Dartmouth College.He specialized in analyzing politicians
facial gestures, and their effect on viewers.”

Politicians
have long been described as wearing many masks –and masks is a great
description to describer all of these poems:the masks describe Denis’s livelihood, which at the time seemed hopeless
that he would be able to resume due to his injuries.But Denis returned to teaching, which amazed
everyone, and remained teaching for the next twenty years until his death on
June 8, 2013.

In grad school he trained himself

on politicians,

watched video clips,

interrogated facades-

displays of power,

untended flinches

of fear – and here I am face

to face with a man

who withheld himself.

Excerpt from “Reading Faces”

Masks also describe the different
personalities and routines each of the family members had to maintain in order
to function – father became son, son became father, wife became mother, husband
became child.

“Papa, you can’t talk.”

Why not?He bellows, You are.

Heads angrily turn

as Ramaswami

attacks a slow mangalam

and I find way

to prayer.“Whatever

can mend this, let it come.”Turn,

kiss his cheek.He calms.

Excerpt from “Attending an
Indian Concert.”

Black on the windows

for the months his wife held him

when he balled up, cried, or Fuck-you’d

the world.

Excerpt from “Darknesses”

Eventually Denis did learn to read and write
and, as part of his therapy and recovery, wrote in an accident recovery journal
which gave him a new mask – that of rebirth and hope.

“As I feel
better the sun shines more brightly and as I see the sun I walk as close as I
can towards it.”

-from my father’s accident recovery
journal

Excerpt from “Appetites”

These journal entries are quoted throughout the
book Black
Ice: 108 pages of 72 poems divided into three parts:

1.Daily Diminutions

2.Sons of Fathers

3.Enter the Fire

Sullivan described the writing of Black
Ice as a

therapeutic
journey.

“This collection has been a powerful journey for me. A way
of reconciling myself to my Dad's dementia and death, but of also recognizing
the gifts that occurred even as he declined.”

The entire family experienced a decline –his
three sons, Marc, Kevin, and David especially his wife Margaret (Peggy), who
had to give up her dream of pursuing a PhD in art.

She believed
he’d teach again,

relearn how to read and write.She

Would be confidante and guide, her dream

of a PhD suspended.

Excerpt from “Darknesses”

Denis has to wear a mask of pretending
that he can read a book by Dr. Seuss to his granddaughter, David’s daughter
Amina Barivan.

He holds Dr. Seuss

while my daughter turns pages.

Whispers his panic:

I can’t read.We laugh.

“Neither can she.Make it
up.”

He wants
yellow eggs . . .

Excerpt from “Judge”

Despite this suffering and this
separateness father and son connect – in a very rare moment where Denis is the
father figure and David his son.

He doesn’t ask why I wake him,

folds me against his chest –

forty-odd years whispered away

as he strokes my hair.

His condition grows him kinder.

Excerpt “Back Home”

It’s painful to read of Denis’s suffering
– from the physical of not having control of his own body in “All Fall Down”; not able to tell time
in “Drawing the Clock’s Face”; the
loss of hearing in “Back Home”; the
loss of his independence in “Life and
Death Before Breakfast.”; not able to twist the plastic rig from an orange
juice jug in “Assisted Living”, but
most tragically he seems to have lost the ability to remember.

Clock reads 1 a.m.

Where am I again?I blink,

and my father leans

over the couch where

I’d been sleeping:David?

Where has
Peggy gone?

I pat him calmer,

repeat Mom’s itinerary,

then lead him to bed.

Excerpt from “Hay
Caracoles!”

Despite this sadness there are sparks of
triumph – where Denis does remember – he remembers how to express love to his
son by stroking his hair in “Back Home”;
he remembers how to play Hearts in ‘Judge”;
and perhaps the most emotional compelling memory is described in “Touched” when father and son visit the
mbulu ngulu figures at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum.

My dad’s hand rises

to stroke shimmery metal.

Panicked, I look around.

Gallery’s empty.

Each sculpted elder aches to

have their features shined

by attentive hands

and the grit of sand – the gods

feel when we touch them.

Dad guides my palm to

the glint.When you were young

your skin
felt like this.

Excerpt from “Touched”

In “Mask
Making 101” David Allen Sullivan makes a mask for his own son Jules
Barivan.This mask symbolizes the new
roles grandfather, father, and son must live out– roles that are both familiar
and strange.

He disappears under headlines and blurred car crashes.

Feels like
wet noodles, he says until his mouth’s sealed

and only nostrils allow him to breath. Strip

after strip builds him up, a hardening mirror.

Quietness discomforts me.I
want him still to need

what I have to give.When he
pulls it off

his double lies in his hands.He stares into it

then turns it over.Does this really look like me?

Excerpt from “Mask Making
101”

The final mask to be unveiled is the
death of Denis depicted in the poem “Beached”,
where Sullivan describes his father’s death as the red ocean ebbing.In the poem, Sullivan, who is with his
brother Kevin, reads his father a poem by Mary Oliver.

I read a poem.

Kev lowers one hand

to the laboring heart and says:

Go if you
want to,

stay if you
need to.

Ocean swell lifts, a red wave

rises through neck and

face, suffuses him

with color and a last breath

he releases.

Excerpt from“Beached”

“My brother really did say these things, and my father did
take in a breath, let it out, and was gone.Amazing when something like that happens, and you suddenly realize that
some part of him was still conscious, still with us, and still aware of our
touch and words. Spirit dwells inside, even as the body dies.”

Out of the collection “Beached”
was the most compelling and emotional for Sullivan to write.

"As I composed this poem, near the end of finishing the book, it
felt like a way to unite the separate strands. And in that goodbye my older brother and I were united in a
special way. That send off of our shared father was a way of sending us off as
well. Transformed. It was a privileged time where the spirit of our father was
manifest, and its leaving a gift."